When I was in college, politics was \u201cmy thing\u201d. I was involved in student politics, local politics, and even worked for the 1976 Jimmy Carter Campaign as a paid (not much) staff member. Pasted up on my wall were different sayings to remind me of why I wanted to be in politics. \u201cAsk not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country\u201d, and \u201cI dream things that never were and say, why not?\u201d were prominent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But there were also phrases to remind me what was bad about American politics. Remember, this was in 1974-75, only ten years after the Civil Rights Act was passed. Nixon resigned the month I started college, and the Vietnam War was still going on, though \u201cwinding down\u201d. And a power in Southern Democratic politics was the Governor of Alabama, George Wallace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s easy to look back on Wallace and see him as the racist he was. But in the early 1970\u2019s, Wallace was still important, still a Governor, and had the sympathy of many as a candidate paralyzed in an assassination attempt. Wallace had \u201csmoothed the edges\u201d of his racist rhetoric, trying to sound like a \u201cpopulist\u201d. But like the proverbial leopard, he hadn\u2019t changed his spots. So I made sure George Wallace\u2019s most famous phrase was on my wall. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
When he first won the Alabama Governorship in 1962, Wallace was sworn in on the State Capitol portico, intentionally standing on the same spot (marked with a star) where Jefferson Davis was sworn in as President of the Confederacy. And Wallace\u2019s speech that day was one that Davis himself might have delivered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIn the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n The \u201cSeventies\u201d might have changed Wallace into a more polished \u201cmedia figure\u201d, but he still was the man of 1962, and of 1963 when he stood in the \u201cSchoolhouse Door\u201d of Alabama University to prevent integration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Racism has smoothed its language. No one is talking about segregation as a \u201cgood thing\u201d anymore. But Racism is a constant of American political life. It has been for one-hundred and fifty six years, since the end of the Civil War. In my youth, racism was more \u201cobvious\u201d, with physical segregation the law in many states. My parents took trips to see the horse farms in Kentucky, and as we stopped for gas, there were \u201cWhite\u201d and \u201cColored\u201d restrooms. It isn\u2019t \u201cancient\u201d history \u2013 it is in my memory (though some of the students I see as a substitute might equate me and the word ancient). <\/p>\n\n\n\n In the seventies it was no longer segregation. The new term was \u201cbusing\u201d. The threat of \u201cbusing\u201d students to integrate schools brought a new reality of racism to the North. And it built the \u201csuburbs\u201d, as white folks fled the cities in order to keep their children from integrated schools. The \u201cthreat\u201d of busing pretty much ended when the Supreme Court ruled that while school districts needed to work towards integration, the Courts couldn\u2019t force \u201ccross district\u201d busing. So the \u201csuburbs\u201d were safe with their separate districts. And politicians used busing as a cudgel, to threaten the community, and gain votes. Underlying the term, like segregation, was racism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then in the eighties and nineties the cry was \u201caffirmative action\u201d. How dare a person of color with fewer opportunities get some \u201cadvantage\u201d over those that always had privilege. We still hear that \u201cdog whistle\u201d today. A reasonable accommodation to hundreds of years of discrimination has become a \u201cbattle cry\u201d of victimhood for some white folk. Their \u201cwhiteness\u201d put them at advantage throughout US History, now when the tables are tweaked just a little, they cry with \u201crighteous outrage\u201d about the unfairness of things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the early 2000\u2019s the new term was \u201cheritage\u201d. Preserving \u201cour\u201d heritage was a codeword for keeping the advantages that \u201cwhiteness\u201d had always allowed. Heritage was a carefully preserved and protected story of America that \u201cwhite-washed\u201d all of the hateful actions towards people of color and indigenous natives. It was an America where slaves were freed by Lincoln, and then again by Lyndon Johnson. The intervening century of discrimination wasn\u2019t discussed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n It was a land where sturdy pioneers went out into the wilderness and wrested a world of agricultural industry from empty fields. It didn\u2019t talk about the folks that lived in those fields before, or the culture that was destroyed so that the wheat could grow and the cattle graze. Even the buffalo had to be eliminated \u2013 to, as General Phil Sheridan put it, \u201cdestroy the Indian commissary, and make the plains safe for the speckled cattle\u201d. American heritage didn\u2019t talk much about that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Racism was supposed to \u201cdie out\u201d in the new millennium. We are a nation that will soon have no majority race, a nation that will be \u201cmajority-minority\u201d. And still the appeal to white voters is there, the \u201cdog whistle\u201d so high pitched that only white people can hear it. This year, that\u2019s being called \u201cCritical Race Theory\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n It doesn\u2019t matter that \u201cCritical Race Theory\u201d really is an esoteric graduate level study of American law and procedure. Critical Race Theory now is incorrectly applied as a watchword that covers all kinds of diversity training, and the rooting out of the more blatant racism of our past. The words are used to evoke the same racism that \u201cheritage\u201d and \u201caffirmative action\u201d and \u201cbusing\u201d and \u201cdesegregation\u201d did in our past. <\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s not really a \u201cdog whistle\u201d. The incorrect use of the term Critical Race Theory has become a national clarion call for those white folks who are fighting their own inevitable minority-ness. They are losing their privileged status, and some are kicking and screaming about it every step of the way. And much like George Wallace, politicians from Senators to school board members are taking advantage of their discomfort, and appealing to their basest hatreds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A phrase that was not on my wall at college, but should have been, is by Martin Luther King; \u201cThe arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.\u201d Time will cure America. But like any disease, the sooner you start curing the illness, the sooner you can get better. Right now, we are letting the sickness spread. That IS our heritage, but it should not be and cannot be our future. <\/p>\n\n\n\n We need to do some bending to make America just.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dog Whistles<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Heritage<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Critical Nonsense<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
The Moral Universe<\/h3>\n\n\n\n